‘We can’t afford to send her abroad, bhai,’ my mother replied, sounding dismal.

‘I’ll take care of her tuition. I was really angry when I came across her biodata in the NRI WhatsApp community. You just married off her elder sister to that boy in Australia. But Harpreet had no other ambitions anyway, so I never said anything. But what’s the harm in sending this studious one to America when I’m offering to pay for it? She really wants to do something with her life!’ Uncle Joe yelled at my mother.

At that moment, my mother realized that I had overheard every single bit of their conversation, so she hurriedly told Uncle Joe that she would call him back later.

I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. What the hell! My mother hadn’t even bothered to tell me once, let alone ask me, before sharing my biodata with the NRI community group on WhatsApp. I had no idea that not clearing the competitive exams meant getting married off to a stranger, in an even stranger land. Then again, that’s the price you paid for being a young woman in my country. And I’ve been paying this price since the day I was born.

My grandmother, who lives with my paternal uncle and his family in the house next to ours, had chosen to stay with them because she was unhappy with my mother for not being able to produce a male offspring. She had literally gone into mourning for ten days after my mother gave birth to a second girl child. And yes, that second girl child was me. My grandmother had hated me from the moment she found out that my chromosomes were XX and not XY. She felt that I was the fruit of the sins her family never committed. She had even suggested putting me up for adoption or just dumping me in an orphanage, but that didn’t happen. She had then brutally tried to force my mother into bearing another kid, all in the hope that it would be an XY gamete. My mother now has poor mental and physical health because of all the birth control pills she secretly gulped down back then, almost treating them like mouth fresheners, to avoid getting pregnant again.

To add to my mother’s misery, my paternal aunt has two sons, both of them settled in Canada. However, while everyone thinks they’re working as civil engineers, I know their secret—the elder one cleans toilets and the younger one is an interstate truck driver. Yes, they’re sort of decently settled, but that’s because they’re in Canada. Neither of these professions would’ve provided them with the comfort of a warm house and some bread and butter on the table had they been pursuing them in India.